Halloween is our favorite holiday at Adafruit. It’s the “maker’s holiday,” whatever your medium of choice.
Each year we add a few new Halloween-themed guides to the Adafruit Learning System. Something about these guides can be a little deceiving: you see a recipe for a finished, working thing. But what you’re not seeing is the process…the thinking behind it, all the goofs, blisters, learning experiences and Blue Smoke Monsters, and the compromises made along the way. Those “finished, working” guides are often pretty messy behind the scenes.
Trying something different this year, we’ll blog in-progress updates on some of our Halloween projects, for better or for worse. I’m collaborating with Erin “Firepixie” St Blaine on a costume idea, a mix of high-tech and more “analog” crafts.
Erin writes:
I saw the Ant-Man movie on a whim one afternoon, and got pretty excited about the character of Wasp. I’m not a huge comic book fan and so I hadn’t heard of her before, but it’s such a cool character idea that I went home and did a little research.
Turns out that not only is she pretty much THE founding member of the Avengers, she’s also a badass superhero and a fashion designer “in real life”. Most superheroes get a costume and stick with it, but Wasp appears in over 50 different costumes throughout her comic book career. How much fun is that? Plus, she can fly.
I’ve made several sets of costume wings before but had some new techniques I really wanted to try. That, and the freedom of design that her Fashion Designer Identity gives me made her a pretty great choice for Halloween this year.
I found some awesome fabric and did a whole bunch of sketches. I want the costume to look very superhero, and straddle the line a little bit between the Avengers Movie Wasp (or the idea of her, she isn’t fully revealed in the movie) and the comic book Wasp. I settled on a design that’s got a little bit of flexibility. She’ll have a sexy low cut top, like she favors in the comic books, and a removable cape and helmet which will transform the costume into something more like the movie version.
The costume design, with its helmet and wings, provide ample opportunities to bring electronics and 3D printing into the mix…we’ll get the Ruiz brothers involved as well. Watch for updates…
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Every day this month we’ll be bringing you ideas and projects for an Electronic Halloween! Expect wearables, hacks & mods, costumes and more here on the Adafruit blog! Working on a project for Halloween this year? Share it with us on Google+, in the comments below, the Adafruit forums, Facebook, or Twitter— we’d love to see what you’re up to and share it with the world (tag your posts #ElectronicHalloween). You can also send us a blog tip! Tune in to our live shows, Wearable Electronics with Becky Stern, 3D hangouts with Noe and Pedro, and Ask an Engineer, featuring store discount codes, ideas for projects, costumes, decorations, and more!
